15 October 1967
Show Name * Top Gear Station * BBC Radio One YYYY-MM-DD * 1967-10-15 Comments * Strictly speaking, this wasn't a Peel show, but the three-hour programme was hosted by Pete Drummond and Tommy Vance and was one of the three Top Gears in October 1967 which were introduced by other DJs. before Peel became a regular presenter of the show, with the help of producer Bernie Andrews. However, Peel may have had some influence on the choice of session artists for these programmes. This show includes some the DJ approved of; The Who, Jimi Hendrix, the Incredible String Band, and Skip Bifferty. As Ken Garner (The Peel Sessions, p.41) points out, sessions for these early Top Gears tend to be called "Peel Sessions" because Peel, unlike the other DJs featured on the first few shows, had a lasting association with the programme, being sole presenter from 1968 until it ended in 1975. In addition, some of these sessions were repeated a few weeks later, when Peel was co-hosting the shows with Tommy Vance. * The Radio Times listing for this show (which can be seen on BBC Genome) lists the session artists and says the show will feature "the coolest record sounds around". But it omits the Who, whose first session for Top Gear was transmitted on this broadcast. According to Ken Garner's The Peel Sessions (p.45) it was "the first BBC session recorded outside the Corporation" and included "five one-off jingles for the show". * No complete recording of this show is known to exist, although compilations of Top Gear session tracks from this era, mostly off-air recordings but with few DJ links, have been circulating among collectors. On one of these, Drummond asks the audience to "listen carefully" to the Who's session version of their "mini-opera", "A Quick One". Some intros and outros by Vance and Drummond appeared, along with off-air recordings of the band's session tracks, on the first volume of "God's Holiday", an unofficial compilation of live and radio recordings by the Incredible String Band. The Jimi Hendrix session was rebroadcast on several occasions and, like the Who session, was circulated by fans as an off-air recording until it was eventually included on an official release. Sessions * Who #1. Recorded: 1967-10-10. Available on BBC Sessions (Polydor). Repeated (with additional tracks "See My Way" and "Someone's Coming") on 19 November 1967 * Incredible String Band #1. Recorded: 1967-10-10. * Jimi Hendrix Experience #1. Recorded: 1967-10-06. Repeated on 26 November 1967. Available on The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Radio One (Rykodisc) * Bee Gees #1. Recorded: 1967-10-09. Two of the session tracks appear on The Bee Gees - BBC Session 1967-1973 (Wohnstubb Recordings). An additional track, "World", was recorded but not broadcast until the session was repeated on 12 November 1967. * Skip Bifferty #1. Recorded 1967-09-29. Repeated on 19 November 1967. Available on The Story of Skip Bifferty (Castle Music) * Johnnie Young And The Word Only session. Recorded 1967-10-09. (Mislabelled "Jessie Young and the Word" in Ken Garner's The Peel Sessions.) Tracklisting *Bee Gees: To Love Somebody (session) 1 3 *Bee Gees: Cucumber Castle (session) 3''' *Who: Relax (session) '''2 File ;Name *1) TG 15.10.67 Bee Gees To Love Somebody *2) Top Gear 15.10.67 The Who 'Relax' + Armenia (LP Track) *3) Bee Gees - Peel session - Top Gear 15/10/67 ;Length *1) 3:00 *2) 5:53 (to 2:33) *3) 5:07 ;Other *3) This is an extended version of File 1 ;Available *1) Soundcloud *2) Soundcloud *3) Youtube Category:1967 Category:Shows Category:One For Ken Category:Available online Category:Harper Reels